


The Most Vindictive Divorce Lawyer Alive

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: Angel: the Series, Desperate Housewives
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 16:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4926409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bree finds a vindictive lawyer. And more enlightenment. As you do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Vindictive Divorce Lawyer Alive

Finding a truly vindictive divorce lawyer is more of a challenge than one would imagine; I had gone to the best family lawyers in the county and found them all wanting. They were professional, they were smart, but there was a certain quality lacking in them.

Mostly, I found it repulsive that they believed I was motivated by cupidity rather than a need to see Rex destroyed, ground into powder. Because it wasn’t in my best interest to destroy Rex the way I wanted him destroyed.

Best interest be damned. It was in my interest to watch the ridiculous bastard squirm.

So that was where **she** came in. I found her blocking the exit to the latest building of half-useful lawyers, tapping an immaculately polished high heel against the frame.

“Excuse me,” I said, rather surprised that someone as well-groomed as the woman in front of me would block my exit for no particular reason. “I said…”

“You said a lot of things, and none of your potential lawyers seem to understand,” the woman replied, fingers idly toying with a scarf at her neck. “Your husband cheated on you with on Maisy Gibbons, who has been supplementing her family income with some idle prostitution. You want Rex stripped of income, dignity, and all visitation rights. Possibly you want some big guys with brass knuckles to bruise him while he tries to protect his car from being repossessed.”

I blinked. “Who…are you?”

“The most vindictive lawyer on Earth,” the woman replied, handing me a business card. “Lilah Morgan, CEO of Wolfram and Hart, Los Angeles. Recently reinstated. And you are Bree Vandekamp, my latest client and possibly an employee if we decide working together is amenable.”

I found myself with very little to say. Staring seemed to be an acceptable substitute, so I stared at Lilah Morgan of Wolfram and Hart, from the glossy waves of hair clearly meant to evoke Veronica Lake, the low-key dark lipstick, the white blouse and slim skirt, and pantyhose all topping off the pumps. I approved of what I saw. Lilah was clearly someone who took care of appearances.

“You’re not going to talk me out of a vicious divorce from my husband?” I asked, just to be certain that she understood what I wanted. “I don’t care if I have to get three jobs to support myself. I want him alive, in pain, and knowing that one doesn’t **do** that.”

Lilah smiled sympathetically. “Done,” she said. “If you accept that I’m not a normal lawyer, and that when you say vicious and vindictive, I will not be sympathetic if you chicken out.”

“Chicken out?” I asked, turning my head delicately. “Clearly, we’re not well-acquainted yet.”

And thus began one of the most unusual partnerships of my life. Lilah wasn’t joking when she said that she was vicious and vindictive. The first thing that she had done was to expose Maisy’s “operation” and have the poor woman on solicitation charges, corruption of minors, et cetera, until Maisy had no choice but to turn state’s evidence against my husband.

Rex almost had another heart attack and his doctor gave him a stern talking-to. He also sent me a diamond tennis bracelet, which I took to Lilah with a knot of uncertainty in my stomach.

“Having second thoughts? Cold feet?” Lilah asked. I shook my head, but my hands trembled when I set the bracelet on the desk.

“I thought if I obliterated Rex, everything would be simpler. It would simply be over,” I said, sounding young. “You probably don’t understand. Whenever I try to explain, people use the words obsessive compulsive and leave it at that.”

Lilah arched an eyebrow, tilted her head, and picked up the bracelet, diamonds set in white gold, and twisted it back and forth. “I really hate white gold,” she said. “Love diamonds, but I’d rather my diamonds set in platinum or silver.”

I realized with a lurch that she was bending the settings this way and that, warping the bracelets. When she finally destroyed the clasp and dropped the thing on the floor, I was certain I was sweating. If she’d said a word, I hadn’t heard it.

“Why do that?” I asked. “I would have sent it back.”

Lilah looked at me mildly, and for the first time I realized there was something about her that wasn’t right. Something that crawled down my skin like small insects. Earwigs.

“I had some major things go down in my life about two years ago,” she began, clearing her throat. “Which I suppose sounds like a non sequitor, but it’s my segue into explaining why I did it, and why I understand exactly why you want to obliterate Rex’s very soul.”

I looked at her curiously. “What sorts of things?” I asked.

“I got a promotion,” she said. “I got a boyfriend. A very bad boyfriend. I was injured very badly by a monster. I hid out in some sewers for a while, and then I was painfully murdered by a crazy woman. Then my boyfriend cut my head off. And that’s when things got interesting.”

So my lawyer was insane. But at least that explained why she enjoyed watching Rex squirm as much as I did. It would be very cathartic after imagining your boyfriend cut your head off. She was also distracting me from the mangled bracelet by unwrapping her scarf, where her “beheading scar” would…

“That is the most interesting example of self-injury I’ve ever seen,” I said, standing up to get a better look. Lilah stared at me, open-mouthed, and then started to laugh.

“Well, I suppose loving Wesley was self-injury, in a broad symbolic sense, but Bree…pay attention. My law firm…and it’s mine again after my bosses got rid of an unfortunate little Champion wannabe and his pack of self-righteous do-gooders, and **that** was worth a year’s worth of orgasms, right there…deals in certain supernatural aspects.”

“Including zombification?” I asked suspiciously.

“Actually…never mind,” Lilah said. “You think I’m insane.”

“I think you may not be on a first-name basis with lucidity, but that’s not for me to judge. I hired you to eviscerate Rex Vandekamp, and if that happens to be literally,” and I paused, “Well, you certainly warned me first.”

Lilah wiped tears from her eyes. “Bree,” she said, grinning like a loon, “I love you. But anyway, back to your ruined bracelet. I get you because I was you. The world is a nasty, ugly, chaotic place. And it shouldn’t be. It should be orderly. It should work, and people should do what they’re supposed to. People should listen.”

I nodded. She did understand. Maybe this didn’t speak well of my sanity if the person who understood was an insane self-injuring lawyer who thought she was the undead, but beggars can’t be choosers.

“So why make the world less orderly and…” I gestured at the bracelet. “Doesn’t it wreck your focus? Don’t you want to fix it immediately?”

Lilah tilted her head. “Part of me was horrified I even touched the thing,” she admitted with a sheepish wrinkle of her nose. “I love diamonds. They’re so perfect. But like I said, I was dead or thought I was, and so I had a lot of free time in-between work assignments, so I took up spiritual enlightenment as a pasttime. You know, trying to understand the chaos and all that crap.”

“And your evil bosses who brought you back from the dead thought this was nifty-keen?” I asked incredulously.

“My bosses have a very balanced philosophy. Nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,” Lilah said. “After all, if a mass-murdering vampire can be the good guy, certainly finding spiritual peace has to have its dark side. I did some serious searching. I went to a Buddhist shrine, I did a lot of drugs with teenagers at raves, sacrificed a goat to Satan…I even tried Catholicism again.”

I feigned a shudder. “Oh, never Catholicism!” I said sardonically.

“It was a trip,” she said. “But Bree, here’s the point. I came to see that the order-making matters, not because it’ll stay, but because making order puts you fully in the moment. There’s the laundry, there’s the folding, there’s the sorting socks, there’s the smell of fabric softener.”

She did understand. Usually, that was how I felt after potting new annuals, but I didn’t grudge her laundry Zen.

“And?” I asked, impressed but not quite seeing her point.

“Well, you can be in the moment a lot of ways. Even in jangly moments of pointless destruction,” Lilah said with a shrug. “Obliterating Rex like the middle-aged smug bastard he is has many aspects. On the one hand, you want that part of you to be clean and smooth, cauterized from knowing he no longer exists, right?”

I nodded mutely.

“The other part of is that you want to see all the chaos. You want to show Rex just HOW much you’re right and how he’s a son of a bitch for constantly driving that stillness away, and you’re not going to be better until you embrace that part of your nature,” Lilah said, grimacing. “Oh, God, I sound like Angel. But anyway, Bree. You have a choice. You can destroy Rex; if you do, I have a position for someone with your ruthless need for order at Wolfram and Hart. You will enjoy your work. People will respect you, and you will die a wealthy and powerful woman.”

“And if I go back to Rex? If I tell you I don’t need your services and your pseudo-spiritual claptrap?” I asked, realizing that we were not dealing in theoreticals at that moment. Lilah was eyeing me like a potential predator.

“Then you’ll be uncertain,” she said. “It may work out. You may die happy, a wife and mother who awed the neighborhood by planning the menu for her own funeral. You may be secretly bitter for the rest of your life. I don’t know. You’ll probably have Rex, for better or worse, if that’s what you choose.”

I closed my eyes. I could see each future as clearly as if they’d been filmed and placed before me. I took a deep breath in and tried to imagine the parts that weren’t foreseeable. Lilah was absolutely quiet, and either she was the undead or I was breathing too loud to hear her breathing.

I could count my heartbeats, considering the moment. Stand up, smile, and shake Lilah’s hand. Tell her that she had a new business associate. The children already hated me; if Rex could buy them, so could I. Find out if she was crazy, or if there was a supernatural law firm running things behind the scenes. Life would be clean, simple, and orderly.

I wanted it so badly that I could taste it, a desire as strong as any lust. Things would be right. With someone like Lilah around, someone who understood, things could be made right.

But when I opened my eyes, there was the ruined bracelet.

White gold, diamonds, and the pathetic hanging ruin of the clasp. I had let that happen. Could I really find happiness by giving all the orders and forcing that cleanness on people who didn’t understand?

Lilah was looking at the bracelet, too. “Nothing endures except change,” she muttered. “I think I’ll let you go for now, Mrs. Vandekamp. You and your bracelet. Give me a call when you’re interested in meeting again.”

Her hand was cold and dry when she pressed the bracelet and its poking, ruined bits into my palm. She had kind eyes, my lawyer, when she wasn’t busy doing a thing to perfection.

I didn’t know if that was a bad thing or not.

 


End file.
